The formal structure for intense practice is a silent retreat, which can last anywhere from one morning to three years. No talking, no reading, no writing, no eye contact. You’re stranded on the island of your mind. You’re sitting peacefully, or impatiently, or hungrily, when a thought suddenly jerks through your head and your inner world breaks into a riot—heart racing, muscles gripping, adrenaline pouring, breath speeding.
You bring your attention to the explosion: what is this? Ah, this time it’s anger…and it feels lousy. You notice that it’s causing you pain—you, not X, the object of your anger. Focusing on the sensations of the emotion, you stop telling yourself the story of how X did you wrong. Without the story, the anger runs out of fuel. Relief. Non-anger feels so good. You come to be less and less afraid of your own interior storms.
These treks through the mind became my idea of adventure travel, and I’d take off for a week a few times a year. But after a while, my return to “all this” no longer felt satisfying. In fact, it was dissatisfying. “All this” whips up your appetites. As much as you have, others have more…or less. That one-down feeling is a bitch, but so is that one-up feeling—you just don’t see how it isolates you, leaves you constantly, if subliminally, threatened.
- More Here
You bring your attention to the explosion: what is this? Ah, this time it’s anger…and it feels lousy. You notice that it’s causing you pain—you, not X, the object of your anger. Focusing on the sensations of the emotion, you stop telling yourself the story of how X did you wrong. Without the story, the anger runs out of fuel. Relief. Non-anger feels so good. You come to be less and less afraid of your own interior storms.
These treks through the mind became my idea of adventure travel, and I’d take off for a week a few times a year. But after a while, my return to “all this” no longer felt satisfying. In fact, it was dissatisfying. “All this” whips up your appetites. As much as you have, others have more…or less. That one-down feeling is a bitch, but so is that one-up feeling—you just don’t see how it isolates you, leaves you constantly, if subliminally, threatened.
- More Here
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